


The Best Laid Plans

by zaniness



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 07:55:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18912757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaniness/pseuds/zaniness
Summary: When JJ asks him if he ever thinks about his future, Spencer tells her the truth. He does have several possible futures mapped out in his head at any given time. He always has.When he was younger, these plans were purely logical and practical and reasonable because planning for the future seemed like what smart people did and Spencer Reid is a smart person.





	The Best Laid Plans

When JJ asks him if he ever thinks about his future, Spencer tells her the truth. He does have several possible futures mapped out in his head at any given time. He always has. 

When he was younger, these plans were purely logical and practical and reasonable because planning for the future seemed like what smart people did and Spencer Reid is a smart person. 

So Spencer thinks about the future. He thinks about it a lot, actually. It just makes sense. It makes even more sense as Diana’s condition worsens. Spencer feels like he can never be too prepared when it comes to her. It doesn’t help any that Spencer’s father seems to be incapable of doing any planning himself. Mind you, he does enough planning to leave Spencer and Diana. 

While he’s in high school, most of the planning Spencer does revolves around his continuing—and accelerated—education. He researches universities all over the world, focussing on a variety of different disciplines: psychology, mathematics, chemistry, even philosophy. The list goes on. While Spencer doesn’t think he’s cruel, he does know that he’s ahead of his peers and that there are options and career paths open to him that some of his classmates wouldn’t even been able to consider, let alone actually pursue. (His peers have no issue letting Spencer know how much they are dissatisfied by this fact.)

There are of course futures Spencer has planned out that are not fun or exciting. They are based upon necessity and practicality instead of on whimsy or exploration. Spencer learns very early on that schizophrenia can be hereditary, so he prepares for a time when his greatest asset will betray him. After he has Diana committed, Spencer figures that’s what he would do, too. In the event that Spencer inherits his mother’s illness, he’ll commit himself to a hospital. He looks at hospitals in North America and Europe. He has a list he thinks would provide the best care. He had done it for Diana. It makes sense to do it for himself, as well. 

Spencer tries not to dwell on that version of the future. 

It’s easier not to think about it when his mother isn’t around. When it was just the two of them and Diana was having a particularly rough episode, Spencer couldn’t help but imagine himself in her position and it made his stomach rot every time. Having her committed helps. Helps him feel selfish and awful but he also knows he can’t really care for her as well as she needs. Diana being in the hospital really is better for both of them.

Spencer pushes forward, continuing to think where life might take him, and trying to make the most of it before his mind is stolen from him. 

Of all the possible futures he has planned, there’s just something about profiling and working for the FBI that sticks out and stays with Spencer. So he does everything he can to get into the program. He’s challenged—not by the mental bits, of course. There’s just something about shooting a gun that no amount of logic can make him good at, and he’s never been truly athletic so those parts don’t come easy for him at all. In fact, his years at the academy are the first in which he experiences any real doubt about his abilities. He doesn’t doubt that he’s smart enough to do the job—because he definitely is—but he does think that fact that he isn’t athletic will be enough to keep him from the profession he has chosen to pursue. And that’s something he hadn’t planned for at all.

Spencer’s intelligence makes him an asset, and the FBI is desperate enough that they overlook his physical tests and allow him to work for the BAU. It’s nothing short of an exciting time in his life. It also leads Spencer to the first real friends he might actually have, and that’s…different and…unexpected—but nice.

And, of course, it leads him to Derek Morgan. 

He isn’t Spencer Reid anymore. He’s “Pretty Boy” and that shouldn’t send a flush through him but it does.

It never would have occurred to Spencer to plan for romantic attachment.

Romantic relationships are…a show of interesting human behaviour, to say the least. Spencer’s not really sure how he feels about relationships, other than to say he’s not sure it had been a priority (and that his parents were only a good example until they weren’t), and, well, at that point in his life, it still wasn’t a priority, but…he starts to consider what it might be like for the first time in his life. It is weird and messy and not at all easily condensed into easy-to-remember facts, but he’ll never forget the way his heart starts to flutter at the sound of his name being said by Derek’s voice. (Being that turned on by the sound of someone’s voice or the challenging raise of an eyebrow never made it into Spencer’s carefully laid plans either.)

Sometimes, there’s just no planning for human emotion—and Spencer’s plans for the future begin to change. They aren’t concrete, of course. These plans are not actual—not how the future will be, but how the future could be, if Spencer were lucky enough to live in some alternate universe where he were seen as a viable romantic partner. Especially by someone as remarkable as Derek Morgan. 

So Spencer fantasizes—in great, vivid detail. The more accurate the details are, the easier it is for him to believe that one day he and Derek will be together. 

He thinks about the day Derek might move into his apartment or he might move into Derek’s, but Spencer isn’t entirely sure what Derek’s place looks like, so he has to stick with his own for the fantasy to be as accurate as possible.

The details of Derek are so marvellous and yet so subtle at the same time. There’s an extra towel or two hanging in Spencer’s already cramped bathroom. More dishes in the sink. Sports memorabilia. Running shoes by the door. 

Spencer sees his apartment in a new light after Derek Morgan comes into his life, and although Reid has always been a little protective of his own space, he doesn’t mind the idea of Derek in it. As far as Spencer is concerned, Derek is a seamless addition to his apartment. There’s something about Derek’s presence that makes the apartment seem…warm and alive in Spencer’s mind, and it is the most comfortable place he has to live. 

He sees them in various positions, gasping out each other’s names.

Derek. Derek. Der—

(And, well, that little bit of his planning for the future surprises him, too. That damned human emotion and attraction again.)

But Spencer’s version of the future in which he no longer lives alone never comes to pass. He misses his opportunity. 

And then his opportunity is lost forever. 

Savannah comes along and Hank is born and well…Hank Spencer. Another thing Spencer could not have predicted. 

But still Spencer wants. They might not be lovers, but Derek is still Spencer’s best friend. And he knows that Derek is really only a phone call away, and he often plans on calling—even dials the number a few times—but Spencer can’t bring himself to do it. He reminds himself that communication is a two-way street, and that Derek is busy with a young family. Surely all of that is more important than Spencer.

At least for right now.

Spencer doesn’t think Derek would ever turn him away—and part of him even thinks Derek would be glad to hear from him—but he just…he thinks he’ll say that they’ve been really busy with cases lately or there’s something going on with his mother. (At least Derek wouldn’t be able to fact-check the stuff about Spencer’s mom like he would with the BAU. Spencer knows Derek still talks to their other coworkers. And he doesn’t want to be caught in a lie by Derek or his coworkers.)

It’s not that Spencer isn’t happy that Derek is happy. He is, but Spencer is also reminded of the future he had planned, and how that will not come to pass now. And that is hard to handle in and of itself. 

So Spencer thinks about the future some more, and he settles on a version that he thinks would be enough for him. In this version of the future, Spencer no longer works as heavily for the FBI. Instead, the temporary position Prentiss set up for him has turned into a full-time job. He gets to teach at the academy or some other university, but he also still gets to consult on the cases that are truly fascinating or perplexing. (Spencer even thinks, in moments of frivolity, that this version of himself might even own a deerstalker and smoke a pipe. Eccentricity suits him. But then again, it always has.)

He lives in the same apartment he lives in now, and there are no traces of Derek or anyone else that isn’t Spencer himself. He’s not sure it really bothers him, but Spencer doesn’t imagine anyone else in the space because someone else is not something he has not accounted for, and he has spent too much time planning for the impossible that he’s not sure he wants to make that mistake again. Derek isn’t the only one who it hasn’t worked out with—at least he wasn’t murdered, Spencer thinks. At least Spencer has learned something. At some point, Spencer figures, you have to accept that maybe you’re just meant to be alone. So that’s the future he plans for. 

He gets to see his old colleagues and Derek and Savannah and Hank and he settles nicely into the role of weird uncle, and although it isn’t the life Spencer originally planned for, it is the life he has planned for now, and it feels fuller than he could have imagined.


End file.
